


delayed connections

by onceuponamirror



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, prompt: meeting in an airport, short n sweet thanksgiving what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 20:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponamirror/pseuds/onceuponamirror
Summary: just a little turkey day treat. wanted to write something fluffy and try to get the gears rolling again and playing around with variations on canon and some found-family notes. (fairy godmother veronica is such a trope, and yet, very canon, so---) anyway, it's been a while since i've written! please drop me a little note if you enjoyed it.p.s. the brief "mike dukakis's turkey problems" is a regional new england nod, but a favorite one of mine. he's the former massachusetts governor and once was quoted saying that he loves making soup out of turkey carcasses post-thanksgiving and would happily take anyone's leftovers to make soup, and now apparently people won't stop giving him their turkey bones. very monkey's paw. (turkey's claw?)





	delayed connections

He’s familiar with the word _delay_.

In middle school, a haggard, overworked and pinch-eyed school therapist had once turned a sad look onto him and said he’d had something she’d call a _delayed start._ Jughead Jones, at the time, hadn’t fully understood her meaning, but he would later on.

College was _delayed_ too. That much he’d known was coming. Nice, uppercrusted kids call it a _gap year_. For him, it was a gap _of_ years, time spent leaning over an industrial grill and busing plates and making meals out of the untouched parts of someone else’s dinner.

But he got there eventually. He got out, eventually.

A build up of tips and something his boss at the diner had gleefully, smugly titled “The Veronica Lodge Scholarship for Pedantic Writers” finally led him out of his hometown and into school and—well. Onwards.

And in the first few months of starting at Emerson, he really hadn’t given much thought to his slow starts; or, he tries not to, even when it’s painfully obvious that he’s about five years older than his still pimply peers. But it all seems to come back in this moment, as the word itself flashes—literally, flashes—before him now.

_ALBANY: DELAYED._

“Wonderful,” a voice sighs next to him, and he pivots slightly to notice a pretty woman about his age running her hands over the top of an already smooth blonde ponytail. She’s staring at the same information screen as he is and her otherwise pleasant-shaped lips are twisted into a frustrated look.

But then she’s re-adjusting the large floral bag on her shoulder and turning heel, bearing the practiced gait of a person who _means business._ He watches her ponytail decisively swing after her and figures she’s probably the type who would get her way with customer service.

Him, not so much; usually the moment he opens his mouth is the same moment already-exhausted employees lose their patience with him. Something about the general perma-scowl on his face, he supposes. 

The woman disappearing from his thoughts, Jughead picks his duffle up from the floor and swings it over his back, figuring there’s nothing to do but wait, and eat. Boston’s Logan airport isn’t the nicest place he’s ever been, but Jughead is sure there’s some crappy bar and grill where he can get a mediocre burger to tide him over until he reaches the god-tier one at Pop’s.

After a bit of wandering down the terminal, he finds a place, and settles into a spot at the bar that has a decent view of another flight screen across the way. After ordering his meal off a greasy, laminated menu, Jughead pulls out his phone.

 _Flight’s delayed,_ he texts Veronica, who takes less then a minute to call him.

“I know, I already got the alert,” she says without preamble, and there’s a slight clacking in the background. He imagines her in the basement lounge office of Pop’s, the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear. “Commercial airlines have literally gone to the birds. Pun intended, I suppose.”

“You set up an alert for my flight?” He replies, trying and failing to keep the amusement out of his voice.

“Please,” Veronica scoffs, and he supposes he should be touched. And he is, actually. For a long time, Veronica was just his best friend’s girlfriend, and then technically his boss when she used her inheritance to buy Pop’s, but by now, after all her support, he knows he should stop being surprised that she cares about him as more than Archie’s phantom appendage. It is, after all, the season of family, found or not. And with his parents sheets in the wind and his sister across the country, he is grateful for the one he has available. “Look, I’m empty nesting. Pun _deux_. Pardon it.”

“Okay. I’m older than you, technically, but okay.”

He can practically see her half eye-roll and grin through the line. “ _Anyway,_ dear Forsythe, just…hang tight. I thought this might happen when I saw the forecast in Boston. Gucci-willing, the internet tells me it’s just a two hour delay, but worst case scenario, you leave tomorrow.”

“Ugh,” is all he manages, scrubbing his face with his hand. It’d started snowing fairly heavily in his cab ride out, but he hadn’t considered it impacting his flight. He doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with airlines, frankly. “The last thing I want to do is lug all my crap back to a cold and empty dorm room. Everyone’s already left for the Thanksgiving break.”

“So we’ll get you an airport hotel,” Veronica counters, almost distractedly, as if this weren’t a completely unnecessary chunk of change to drop at a hat. Although he’s known her since high school and developed a strange, almost sibling-like camaraderie post-graduation, Jughead still doesn’t think he’ll ever fully get used to Veronica’s comfort with throwing around cash. “Let me call the Seasons to put a room on hold.”

“No, no. Don’t do that. That’s so stupid. It’s like thirty minutes back into the city.”

Veronica makes a _psh_ -ing noise from the back of her throat. “Fine,” she says airily. “Well, keep me updated. Archie says hello, and that he’s still set to meet you at the airport when you land, regardless of when that is.”

“Hey back,” Jughead replies, sighing. “And okay. Thanks, Veronica.”

“Don’t mention it,” she says, and then, with goodbyes, he hangs up.

Exhaling again, he drops his phone onto the bar in front of him and covers his eyes with his hands. He only removes them when he hears someone sliding into a seat nearby.

Jughead glances over to see the woman from before, ponytail and all, with her forehead pressed down against the cheap, dark wood. She lifts her head just slightly to the waiting bartender and says, witheringly, “Just…a glass of white wine, please.”

The bartender nods and sends her a curious but utterly unfazed look—Jughead he supposes, more than most, airport bartenders have really seen it all—and sweeps away. The woman seems to suddenly notice she has an audience, because her eyes dart to meet his and she sits up straight on her stool.

She rubs her forehead with the back of her hand. “Sorry,” she says, inexplicably.

Jughead blinks at her, feeling guilty for some reason, like he shouldn’t have been staring. “Uh, no. It’s fine. Everything okay?”

The words are out of his mouth before he can think otherwise, and he’s not sure who is more surprised—the woman, or himself. He can’t remember the last time he extended platitudes to anyone who he didn’t need to, let alone a perfect stranger. But there’s something quite miserable about her expression, the earlier, determined look in her eye gone.

She surveys him for a moment and then shakes her head. “Well, no, not really. I worked all night to meet this deadline for this totally recycled article about Mike Dukakis’s turkey problems that my editor insisted we run, and then my flight—which was already a bump from this morning—was delayed, and when I tried to talk to the gate desk they basically couldn’t tell me anything, so _then_ I had to call the rental car service and let them know I would be extra late, but _then_ they said they couldn’t hold a car for me for over twelve hours, since my original reservation was for this morning, and that I’d just have to see what was available when I got there? So now I’m probably going to have to call my cousin and make her come and get me from the airport for like, another hour drive, and she’s _not_ the best person to impose on, and I don’t know what time of night it’ll even be, so—” The woman breaks off suddenly, her face flushing, as if realizing how much she’d been talking, and how fast.

Her wine glass had appeared in front of her at some point in her rant, and she grabs for it, taking a quick sip. “God. I’m sorry.”

“You keep apologizing,” is all Jughead can say, and feels himself smiling. “Uh, that sucks though, I’m sorry. ”

At his echoed apology, she grins, a bit sarcastically. He does the same, and the woman sighs, her shoulders drooping. “It’s just…been a long day,” she says.

“I’m getting that,” Jughead replies dryly, and she smiles a bit broader. He feels a strange flutter somewhere near his throat, so he tries to clear it. “My flight was delayed too, if that’s anything. I think a lot are. It’s kinda coming down.” He clears his throat again. “So. You’re a writer? I distinctly heard the words ‘deadline’ and ‘article’ thrown around.”

She tucks her chin into her palm, nodding. “Journalist. Well, trying to be. I really want to write for _The Globe,_ but right now I’m kind of stuck in this local fluff website. What about you, what do you do?”

He’s used to this question and even more used to the dodging answer, but scratches at his ear all the same. “I’m a student. I’d like to write too, but I’m sure I’m headed down a much more thankless path.”

She smirks. “You’re brave, I didn’t have the guts for grad school.”

Jughead taps his finger against the wood grain. “I’m actually…a freshman. Undergrad.” The woman looks strangely horrified at that, which isn’t usually the reaction he gets. Judgment, mainly. “I took a couple of years between high school and applying. Saving up, getting some work experience.”

“Oh,” the woman breathes, smiling. “For a second I thought I’d totally misjudged how old you were.”

He lifts his eyebrows, thinking that if he’s reading between the lines properly, her response was probably a good one. He glances down. “Anyway, it wasn’t anything Hemingway would’ve approved of. I just worked in a diner.”

“Honestly, I think Hemingway could’ve seriously benefited from some service jobs,” she says wryly, and—fuck, he thinks he’s in love. “So where are you flying for Thanksgiving?”

“Albany,” he answers, at the same moment that his food arrives. It looks about as appetizing as he’d expected, but knows he’ll eat it anyway. When he glances up from his plate, the woman is regarding him with a wide-eyed look.

To his surprise, she moves down a barstool, one closer to him. “Oh! Me too,” she says, sounding interested.

He raises his eyebrows and pops a fry into his mouth. “Small world,” he replies, even though he’d already wondered the same, from the moment back at the information screen. “What, uh, what are you doing there?”

“I’m going to my cousins’ for Thanksgiving, and it’s just the closest airport to their town,” the woman says, taking another sip of wine. For the first time, she looks truly sour. “It’s such a trek, but my mom and my sister recently started living on this…commune that doesn’t celebrate ‘western, capitalistic’ holidays, so. To Riverdale I go,” she adds morosely, raising her glass in mock salute.

Jughead nearly chokes on his burger. “Riverdale?” He repeats, patting on his chest to clear it. “Did you say you’re going to Riverdale?”

The woman looks a bit concerned that he still might be struggling to breathe, watching him with a fidgeting hand, one that looks poised to reach his back, should the moment require it. After seeming to decide he’s fine, she falls back in her seat. “Um, yeah, Riverdale. I’d be surprised if you’ve heard of it. It’s pretty small.”

“Well, considering that’s where I’m from, I’ve definitely heard of it,” he replies slowly, incredulously, staring at this woman with a bit more scrutiny.

Her mouth drops open. “You’re kidding.”

Jughead runs his tongue along his bottom lip. What are the odds? “Who are your cousins? That you’re visiting, I mean.”

Her cheeks run a bit pink. “I guess…you might know the Blossom family?”

Now Jughead understands why she seemed to squirm in her seat at the question. “Yeah, them I know,” he replies emphatically, and reaches for his water.

He suspects they’re thinking the same thing, based on her expression. “Yeah. Sorry.”

Surprisingly, he laughs. “You’re apologizing again,” he points out, and she smiles once more. “No, it’s—trust me, you don’t need to convince me that we’re not always best represented by our families. But, well, you just don’t seem anything like them.” _You’re nice, for one,_ he thinks.

“We’re third cousins, but Cheryl and I both went to school in New York together before I moved to Boston for work, and…well, she’s not as bad as she seems. Not anymore, at least.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Jughead replies flatly, though he’s still grinning, and can’t figure out why. Usually the mere memory of Cheryl Blossom’s heels clicking down the hallways send him into a tailspin of meditated annoyance, but he’s finding it increasingly impossible to be annoyed in this woman’s presence.

“You know, I was…actually born in Riverdale too,” the woman is saying, looking at him funny, almost as if she can’t believe the turn of this conversation. “But we moved into the city when my parents divorced. I was really young. I’ve only been back a few times.”

“You didn’t miss much,” Jughead says, waving a hand. “Unless you happen to like living in a place that seems cooked up by a Norman Rockwell-Stephen King hybrid fever dream.”

She hums, tilting her head at him. “This is so weird,” she says. “Like I bet we would’ve grown up at least knowing each other. Maybe this is fate correcting that, meeting randomly.”

He feels his ears burning. “Fate?”

She’s blushing again, and he has to remind himself of the statistical probability that _she_ is flirting with _him_. And yet.

“Well, what are the odds that two random people sitting next to each other in an airport bar are from the same town?”

“Considering most people are traveling either to or from home, I don’t know, it might not be that weird,” he decides, though there’s a strange tug at his chest that makes him doubt it. He sticks out his hand, willing to tempt fortune once more. “Or maybe it is. I don’t know. I’m Jughead.”

There’s the usual reaction of surprise at his name, and then a more unusual smile on her face, wide and shy all the same, as she moves down another seat. She takes his hand. “Betty.”

.

.

.

.

.

 

**Author's Note:**

> just a little turkey day treat. wanted to write something fluffy and try to get the gears rolling again and playing around with variations on canon and some found-family notes. (fairy godmother veronica is such a trope, and yet, very canon, so---) anyway, it's been a while since i've written! please drop me a little note if you enjoyed it.
> 
> p.s. the brief "mike dukakis's turkey problems" is a regional new england nod, but a favorite one of mine. he's the former massachusetts governor and once was quoted saying that he loves making soup out of turkey carcasses post-thanksgiving and would happily take anyone's leftovers to make soup, and now apparently people won't stop giving him their turkey bones. very monkey's paw. (turkey's claw?)


End file.
